Non-uniformism and the Epistemology of Philosophically Interesting Modal Claims

Ylwa Sjölin Wirling

doi:10.1163/18756735-00000146

Abstract

Abstract Philosophers often make exotic-sounding modal claims, such as: “A timeless world is impossible”, “The laws of physics could have been different from what they are”, “There could have been an additional phenomenal colour”. Otherwise popular empiricist modal epistemologies in the contemporary literature cannot account for whatever epistemic justification we might have for making such modal claims. Those who do not, as a result of this, endorse scepticism with respect to their epistemic status typically suggest that they can be justified but have yet to develop some distinct, workable theory of how. That is, they endorse a form of non-uniformism about the epistemology of modality, according to which claims about philosophically interesting modal matters need to be justified differently from e.g. everyday or scientific modal claims, but they fail to provide any more detail. This article aims to fill this gap by outlining how such a non-uniformist view could be spelled out and what story about philosophically interesting modal justification it could contain.

Highlights

The philosophy of modality concerns possibility, necessity, and related notions such as counterfactuals, dispositions, or essences
Non-uniformism is the view that there is more than one basic route to modal justification, i.e. it is a form of pluralism about modal justification
I have offered a way to fill out the non-uniformist idea that philosophically interesting modal claims need to be justified in a different way from e.g. everyday modal claims

Summary

Introduction

The philosophy of modality concerns possibility, necessity, and related notions such as counterfactuals, dispositions, or essences. I will assume – with most others in the modal epistemology debate – that many modal claims outside of the philosophically interesting class are typically to be epistemically evaluated in relation to the fundamental good of believing truly. The basic claim of the axiologically motivated non-uniformism I am presenting is that different kinds of modal claims need to be justified in different ways because they generally occur in contexts of inquiry governed by distinct fundamental epistemic goods. 5.1 The Case against Truth-conduciveness I will present three considerations that jointly present a good case for exploring the idea that believing truly is not the salient fundamental epistemic good in contexts of philosophical inquiry, in relation to which the practices, via free access reasons, and methods that support philosophical theories are to be epistemically evaluated. As Elgin notes, the function that reasongiving plays in aesthetics can be relevant to factual disputes – especially where we have little or no reason to expect that the issue will be resolved, and this includes philosophical matters

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Conclusion